“Every day gets better for us,” chortled Schumer, apparently full of vim that he wasn’t swiftly surrendering to President Donald Trump as he did to avoid a shutdown in March.

As the two-week standoff over the U.S. government shutdown dragged on—imperiling hundreds of federal programs that the Democratic Party has created over the past century—the nation’s top Democrat, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, suggested at one point that he’s fairly satisfied with his party’s progress.

As the two-week standoff over the U.S. government shutdown dragged on—imperiling hundreds of federal programs that the Democratic Party has created over the past century—the nation’s top Democrat, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, suggested at one point that he’s fairly satisfied with his party’s progress.

“Every day gets better for us,” chortled Schumer, apparently full of vim that he wasn’t swiftly surrendering to President Donald Trump as he did to avoid a shutdown in March.

But few in the country agreed—and Democrats continue to earn record-low ratings among voters (who still trust Republicans more on economic issues, even though the Democratic Party is polling slightly better on the shutdown). And therein lies the latter political party’s long, woeful tale of impotence against Trump, the most powerful demagogue that the United States has ever seen.

Even as Schumer was preening on Capitol Hill, Russell Vought, Trump’s zealous Office of Management and Budget director, was halting billions of dollars in funds for Democratic-led states and using the shutdown to pursue his long-term plan of inflicting “trauma”—in the form of mass layoffs—on what Vought has condemned as a pro-Democratic federal workforce.

Trump, meanwhile, directed his Justice Department to begin to indict leading Democrats, starting with New York Attorney General Letitia James, and he ordered National Guard troops into Chicago while threatening Illinois’s top Democratic officials with jail time. That prompted one of those officials, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, to rail against “do-nothing Democrats” back in Washington, saying, “This is exactly the moment for people to stand up. And do I see enough people doing it? No, I don’t.”

Nor does anyone else. The party’s most recent standard-bearer, former Vice President Kamala Harris, seems mainly focused on relitigating the past as she continues a tour for her new book 107 Days—Harris’s somewhat self-pitying account of her failed presidential run—in which she writes that she predicted Trump’s scorched-earth agenda and says, “I warned of it. What I did not predict: the [Democratic] capitulation.”

Rather stunningly, Harris then advises her fellow Democrats: “We need to come up with our own blueprint that sets out our alternative vision for our country.” Huh? Isn’t that what Harris was supposed to be doing when she ran for president?

A group of dozens of U.S. lawmakers and supporters stand together on the steps of the Capitol, gathered behind a podium with a sign reading “Save Healthcare,"